INTRODUCTION

The Royals take game one of the series against the Rays winning 2-1 in Tampa.

PITCHING

The pitching for the Rays was amazing today as they only gave up two runs in the whole game. The starter Rasmussen went 6 innings only giving up 2 runs in his excellent start. The relievers came in and did their jobs each going one inning with limited baserunners and putting up a zero on this Royals offense.

The biggest problem with the Rays pitching was the fact the Royals starter Wacha went 7 innings of one run ball against this stout Rays offense. I have no notes to add for the Rays pitching they all did their jobs of limiting runs and getting outs. They put the game in the offenses hands and the offense did nothing with it.

HITTING

One run! One run was all the Rays offense put up in this game against the Royals pitching which for most of the year has struggled. The Rays left five runners on base tonight many of those runners in scoring position. They went 0-7 with runners in scoring position tonight.

This is not winning baseball you must get runs to win it is as simple as that. They will need to be better in the future if they want to compete for the American league title this year.

CONCLUSION

The Rays have excellent pitching and they continued to impress in this game tonight. The bats were silenced and they haven’t been great as of late. And the team overall has been slumping. They fall to 43-32 on the year and 3-7 in their last ten. The real question for the Rays is that is this just a hot start to the year or are they for real?

MLB